I have never read any Updike.

but I definitely have a Latin American Ball-sac

Post of the day.

You need to read Updike. The Centaur. Rabbit, Run.

Essential, in my opinion, if you have any love for prose and what can be done with it.

I suffer from non-fiction addiction.

I

Try reading just one novel, either Centaur or Rabbit, Run. Those two along with Nabakov's Lolita are probably the three best books of the last 100 years, in my opinion. I say that just based on the beauty of the prose, not because of the stories.

you too? which history do you prefer? i've read hundreds of history books, but only a few dozen novels, particulary by a few authors, lately its been Clive Barker, Patrick Suskind and Gabriel Garcia-Marquez..

pussy

Art History, science history.

mostly straight science and art and music and philosphy and shit like that.
Most of my book (around 80%) are physics related in some way.

I know he doesn't fit the edgy junky bohemian author profile that appeals to most of you scum here, but Updike, unlike Burroughs and Keroauc, but like Nabakov, was a true master of modern American prose. As far as I'm concerned, his genius far exceeds that of any other fiction writer of the last half of the 20th century.

I'm not sure what I didn't like about Updike's fiction. It's very hard to pinpoint, because I can't exactly say there's anything specific I didn't like about it. I just didn't overall. He's clearly a good/great writer; it just didn't strike me.

GMKU^^So where would you put someone like Bellow?

If you're looking for great stories, I have to agree that he's not that compelling--aside from the two novels I mentioned. He's mostly great as one who provides outstanding models for what the language can be. He said once that he's not so much interested in plot as in describing as best he can what things and experience look and feel like. That's the beauty of his prose. His words create almost a sensual equivalent of the thing.

He's up there with Updike and Nab. But I don't "feel" him as much.

sciene, that is really non-fiction, even more boring than what I read! kudos!

whoa i almost lost track of this. exactly. sure garcia marquez is probably our greatest writer, and sure he was a "magical realist", but the equivalent would be to claim that all british literature is elizabethan drama.

anyway, i was listening to garcia marquez's speech to the swedish academy the other day, and it's briliant, it was mostly a collection of numbers and statistics, and it was more fantastic (the number of deaths, the level of carnage) than any "flying abuelitas" (as some people would say).

there is the other problem that a lot of latin american writers seeking to get famous jumped on the bandwagon & produced horrible imitations of our great monster-- im thinking of people like isabel allende, for example-- terrible.

but yes, we are generally freer with imagination-- one of my problems with most of american fiction is that it gets stuck in this sort of mundane realism where the world is taken for granted-- it's all about the individual psychology in the world, and i find that utterly boring: like hollywood movies. the character goes shopping, then watches tv, then has a fight with his wife, and it's the same all shit over and over. boring.

if garcia marquez achieved something with the way he wrote *some* of his books (not all of them), it's that he provided a mythical dimension to history-- but he deal mostly with history-- endless wars and government abuses and massacres that perhaps could not be told in another way. while a lot of people blame him and point the finger at him for exerting such strong influences, i think they are throwing the baby with the bathwater... out of jealousy mostly.

that is precisely why I like authors like Garcia-Marquez or Patrick Suskind, because their work is the perfect mix of that boring, everyday hollywood cinema bullshit, mixed in with some truly imaginative and extremely metaphysical shit.. it is like eating mushrooms, a blend of wiping your ass to keep it clean, mopping the floor, and experiencing the cosmic oneness of the universe at the same sentence..

in fact, I get many of own epiphanies and religious moments while doing perfectly mundane things like housework (after all, in Ethiopian Christianity we pray to the Virgin as Imebetachin which means "Our Housewife or literally, "Woman of the House who is Ours") and standing around waiting for a bus (hence the subhumans song, "REALITY IS WAITING FOR A BUS")

Hmmmm...that's...not quite...the same.

The story of a second rate teacher, working at a second rate university. It resonates!

I'm yawning through this one...

As I Lay Dying
Psh...not impressed.

great book, got taken away from me last summer, but im getting even at last



fucking tiny picture. it says: "Beyond Thinking: A Guide to Zen Meditation"

also:

(another tiny picture)

karnak café, by naguib mahfouz. i got derailed from this one last december but just restarted. i'm brushing up on egyptian history so i can get what the fuck he's talking about (thanks, wikipedia).

and finally:



oh yeah baby. vol 1 of the collected gilbert hernandez stories from love and rockets. he's like, the garcia marquez of comix, with a gringo touch.

are you really into meditation? if so, kudos to you, man.

meditation is so simple its hard.

I don't think I've ever hated reading a book as much as I did that one. Utter torture. I feel your pain.

The problem with Jane Austen is that you have to have a vagina to like her writing.

Or a prick of a teacher insisting you read it.

But they can't force you to like it though, can they?

Really? Sad.

Yeah, I finished it tonight. His whole style in that book just rubbed me the wrong way. I had to stop reading for about 30 minutes after the half-page about sleep and being and not being. It just made zero sense to me.

Oh I don't read Faulkner for sense. Elaborate southern grotesque with a little bit of mind reading is all I care for.

It's like Lovecraft writing an episode of the Beverly Hillbillies.

I like things to at least make a little sense and overall this book did. Just some moments I had to seriously reread entire pages to see what he was getting it. I didn't have to do that with Ulysses and it made me feel weird. Oh well.

Up next for reading:
continue Trainspotting
start Fellowship of the Ring (for a class) and Perks of Being A Wallflower and after finishing that, American Psycho.

I really <3 my English teacher. She's one of two English teachers in my last 4 years in school who have actually been passionate about the subject, and have really been a great friend to all her students, as well as a great teacher who really has helped us improve our command of the language.

The other AP Lit teacher teaches a lot of cool, more obscure stuff (Equus, Lysistrata) and a few great ones (Importance of Being Earnest), but never collects work, grades work, etc. That's cool for a lot of people, and sometimes I wish I was in his class for the ease, but I still really like my teacher because she actually is challenging and the pay off is obvious.

after a long hiatus, I finally picked up On Stranger Tides last night, perhaps I'll read a bit more after work this morning

i try.

yeah, it's hard as fuck.

Okay, bookies. I'm going to buy a copy of On The Road next week and I want to know if I should get the standard published copy or the "original scroll" edition?

I read this tonight and really enjoyed it. It's kind of a strange, eerie childern's bedtime story for adults...I guess that's the best way to put it. I cannot wait to see the movie.

The "original scroll" is only useful if you give a fuck about Kerouac. If you give a fuck about the actual book, get the real thing. It's like buying the version of the Waste Land that's all hand-written and Ezra-edited--it's cool if you're super into Eliot, but only if you're super interested in him. It was edited for a reason.

I.

Wish I'd taken a picture of this before it was painted over (ya need ta see it, to fully appreciate it) but there was this graffitti on a wall I'd always see on the way to work on the train that said:

"If you close your eyes, the cars almost sounds like faraway ocean waves"

To which someone drew an arrow pointing to this heady musing and replied thus:

"I fucked your mum last night".

So stupid that I had to laugh...

II.

If we're talking books though, then the last book I read was something I found at a bus stop.....



I came away thinking this is like a female version of William Burroughs "Junky".
She was one strung out woman....

1,000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die

The standard, published copy. The novel's editing was justifiable - the scroll edition has no breaks and is littered with bad grammer (I don't mean that in a pedantic way - I mean it's confusing enough as to be unreadable). Without the editing, it's too self-indulgent as to be worth the bother of finding the good bits.

The only good thing about it is he uses the real names and is a bit more open about a few of them having sex with each other. Not that it makes a difference if you're not interested in the beats themselves.

I've been reading 101 Reykjavik. I like it, really reminds me of Martin Amis (Success, Money-era): the prose has a beat-like rhythm, everything is refracted through a knowledge of low pop.culture, lots of philosphical analogies between people/things and what brands, TV shows, groups, they represent - should be annoyingly hip but isn't somehow.